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			<h1>Rubio has dropped out of the presidential race!</h1>
			<p>Day 00399: Saturday, 2016 April 09</p>
		</header>
<p>
	I didn&apos;t have time to get a full night&apos;s sleep last night, but apparently, my body wasn&apos;t going to put up with that.
	I slept through my alarm and was a few minutes late to work.
	In the rush, I ended up not bringing my laptop as planned.
	The boss didn&apos;t notice that I was late until I apologized for it though, so there weren&apos;t any issues.
	Additionally, we ended up running out of materials to work with.
	Though only three people (including both the boss and I) were there today, we all went home an hour and a half early.
	As we&apos;re out of materials to work with, we might not be coming in on Tuesday.
	The boss said he&apos;d contact us and let us know, depending on if the new shipment came in by then.
	I tried to ask if I should assume that I should come in if I don&apos;t receive word or I should assume not to come in, but he insisted that he&apos;d contact me and let me know either way.
</p>
<p>
	We went back to making the smaller sapling protectors today.
	It seems that we finished one large order of small sapling protectors, moved on to a small order of larger sapling protectors, and are now on a new order of the smaller size of protectors.
	The current order was placed by Weyerhaeuser, a company that I recognize as being one of the main lumber companies in my old city, Springfield.
	A few of the machines were turned off, so the room was a lot quieter than it has been.
</p>
<p>
	I brought a couple hundred one-dollar bills to feed to the snack machine to exchange for coins during the lunch break.
	I figured that the machine would run out of coins at some point and I&apos;d have to actually choose a snack, but after about twenty bills, the machine just quit accepting paper money, saying that it would only accept coins.
	I tried the same thing with the soda machine, but it wouldn&apos;t fall for that trick.
	Upon inserting the dollar bill, it spat out one quarter as change without waiting for a selection, then wouldn&apos;t allow me to withdraw the remaining money.
	The only options were to choose an over-priced soda or get nothing.
	It was worth it just to find out that some machines do this for future reference though.
	Luckily, I&apos;d put the frozen potato patties in my bag yesterday instead of into the freezer, so even though I had to rush out the door quickly, I did have them with me for lunch.
	As expected, potato-based food was more energizing than those sandwiches that I&apos;ve been eating.
</p>
<p>
	With only three of us working, covering the lunch breaks was a challenge.
	At one point, I was rushing around between the bag machines, the boxing area, and the sapling protector machines.
	The bag machines had been reconfigured to produce a new type of bag, and now needed to be under constant watch.
	The first machine spun the bag material out of molten plastic, which was slow because the customer had wanted thick and sturdy bags.
	Working with that much material slowed the process down.
	The second machine had to move more quickly though.
	This second machine was responsible for cutting the bags and sealing the bottoms with heat.
	If this second machine slowed down, it would burn through the plastic instead of sealing it.
	In order to keep the cutter/sealer from tugging on the bag material, I needed to shut the cutter/sealer off whenever it started catching up to the extruder and give the extruder time to get ahead again.
	Once shut off, the cutter/sealer didn&apos;t like to start back up either.
	Most of the time, getting it back in motion only required a hard twist of this rod that stuck out from the side.
	The part of this rod that was inside the machine was one of the parts pushing the bag material through the machine and presumably was kept in sync with the other rods with gears or something.
	When I twisted this rod, I was basically forcing the machine out of the position that it was stuck in! At that point, it usually was able to take over and move itself, but other times, I needed to get under the machine and physically move one of the inner wheels that was attached to some sort of band.
	It made me nervous to do that, though it probably wasn&apos;t dangerous as long as you are intelligent enough not to touch the band itself.
	While keeping an eye on those machines to insure that they didn&apos;t play tug of war with the plastic, I also needed to watch the counter on the cutter/sealer so that I could grab sets of twenty-five bags, wrap then in cellophane, and put them in a box.
	Speaking of boxes, I needed to prepare all the boxes for shipping.
	Some of these boxes came from me and the bag machines and needed to be shortened because they were too tall.
	Others came from my boss and the sapling protector machines.
	These boxes were already the correct size.
	In either case, the boxes needed to be closed up with what appears to be an air-powered stapler, wrapped in plastic bands, Apply shipping labels, and make note of the box on a paper form.
	Meanwhile, the boss mostly kept up with the sapling protector machines, which I thought was amazing at the time, but I later found out that he&apos;d set those machines to go slower today after we had finished the large order yesterday.
	Every once in a while though, he&apos;d fall behind slightly, and there is no catching back up with that machine on your own, even on the slower speed, once you fall behind.
	Between doing other things, I&apos;d run over and grab the one or two sapling protectors that had slipped by him and take care of them myself.
	It was a challenge to try to keep up with all of this, but it was kind of fun!
</p>
<p>
	It occurred to me today that this place is a factory.
	I now work at a factory.
	I&apos;ve always wondered what people actually <strong>*do*</strong> in a factory, as I thought that the machines did everything.
	In this case, though I don&apos;t know about every case, it&apos;s been mostly about shipping.
	The machines generate objects, but they need to be put in sets, wrapped up, and boxed.
	Additionally, some machines have needed to be watched to make sure that they don&apos;t do something stupid and damaging.
	In the case of the bag machines, they&apos;d have a tug of war match if left to their own devices.
	In the case of the sapling protector machines, one we noticed at one point that the cutter was damaging the protectors, so having humans there to notice was useful.
	Mostly though, if we can build machines that can pack stuff, we could reduce human labor in this type of factory.
</p>
<p>
	The boss said that he thought that there&apos;d be more work for me to do next week, but he didn&apos;t sound completely sure.
	Additionally, he was unclear when getting my contact information, so it sounded like my job was over at the time.
	He said he&apos;d contact me and let me know if I was even needed next week, which sounds like I might not be needed at all, though later conversation revealed that he actually wasn&apos;t sure if the shipment of new materials would be in yet, and if it wasn&apos;t in, there&apos;d be nothing to have me do.
	Thinking that this was my last day in the factory, I asked a few more questions than I otherwise would have in one day.
	Normally, I&apos;d try to ask only a few things at a time in an effort not to bombard people with questions.
	The main thing that I wanted to know about was how the extruders were generating a mesh material.
	My admittedly-limited understanding of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org./wiki/Extrusion">extrusion</a> was that this didn&apos;t happen.
	Extrusion creates objects that, in one direction, all cross sections are identical.
	It&apos;s like when you shoved toy dough through a hole as a child; you could make really long and funny-shaped noodles that way, but you never ended up with noodles with a mesh pattern.
	As it turns out though, our extruders do something that I didn&apos;t notice in the Wikipedia article (which admittedly, I only had time to skim, not read).
	Essentially, each of the extruders that I&apos;ve been working with is two extruders, one inside the other, spinning in opposite directions.
	Not only can you have a spinning extruder to create a spiral shape, you can nest them to get spirals in opposite directions, forming this mesh! I&apos;m not sure if the output of both extruders is combined while still molten or if it&apos;s hardened and melted together later.
	It looks like the two parts are melted together later, but it seems like it&apos;d make more sense to combine them while still hot.
	I also asked about our products.
	The sapling protectors are obviously for protecting saplings.
	Deer try to eat them, so these plastic cylinders act as a physical barrier so that the deer can&apos;t get their mouths around the young trees.
	The strange tubes have something to do with artificial bee hives.
	One person said that they are used by bees to put honey in, though this tool used to check the size of the tubes mentions bee-feeding.
	The flimsy, purple bags from yesterday and the day before are used for putting plant bulbs in, while the thick, black bags made today are placed over plants to keep them from getting too much sun light.
	Aside from the sapling protectors, none of these are biodegradable, though the so-called &quot;shade cards&quot; are used in the forest and should be.
</p>
<p>
	The boss offered me a ride home again.
	I should have turned it down, but I was feeling defeated by the fact that I couldn&apos;t get my bicycle working, so in a defeat-induced fit of weakened morality, I accepted the ride.
	I pulled out some cash to offer him gasoline money just to not look like a freeloader, but he declined the offer.
</p>
<p>
	When I set up my <abbr title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr> stamp, I only had upper-case letters and non-letters to work with.
	At the time, I figured that it was good enough, as <abbr title="Domain Name System">DNS</abbr> is case-insensitive and Web browsers seem to treat the <q>HTTPS:</q> scheme as the same as the <q>https:</q> scheme.
	Since learning more about <abbr title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr>s though, I haven&apos;t gone back to consider my stamp.
	It occurred to me today that the <abbr title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr> on my stamp is technically correct, though unnormalized.
	<abbr title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr> normalization lower-cases both the host (aside from any percent-encoded characters, if any) and the scheme, so the <abbr title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr> on my stamp is equivalent to my desired <abbr title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr>.
	Now that I know that know that <q>https:</q>-scheme <abbr title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr>s are allowed to have trailing dots, I wanted to fix that on my stamp, and I also wanted to add angle brackets around the <abbr title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr>.
	It turns out that angle bracket characters aren&apos;t available in my stamp&apos;s character set.
	After adding the dot though, there are four characters of space left.
	I can add to the path and reference a particular page that explains the stamp.
	I&apos;m not yet sure what I want the page&apos;s path to be yet though.
	Also, while looking at my character set, I managed to drop one of the stamp character cases, cracking it.
	I need to be more careful.
</p>
<p>
	It turns out that <a href="http://professorshyguy.com/">Professor Shyguy</a> included a link to a <abbr title="Roshal Archive">RAR</abbr> file containing his music in his last letter to me, though I didn&apos;t notice it because there was no space between the sentence containing the link and the quoted letter below.
	I thought that I wouldn&apos;t be able to open this <abbr title="Roshal Archive">RAR</abbr> file, as most <abbr title="Roshal Archive">RAR</abbr> files can&apos;t be opened by free software, but this file actually opened.
	It contained only the <abbr title="MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III">MP3</abbr> files, so I don&apos;t think that Brant understood that part of the problem was the missing lossless files, but it did give me some idea of what was supposed to be there and not.
	I haven&apos;t looked through everything yet, and I&apos;m not sure I will considering later communications with him, but I did see that only three songs from <a href="https://professorshyguy.bandcamp.com./album/triforce-tour-triforce-collected">Triforce Tour - Triforce Collected</a> were present and some albums such as <a href="https://professorshyguy.bandcamp.com./album/ruston-family-christmas">Ruston Family Christmas</a> weren&apos;t included at all.
	Brant said that if I mail back the <abbr title="Universal Serial Bus">USB</abbr> drive, he&apos;ll send a new one that&apos;s less temperamental.
	I&apos;ll compare the files that I already have against the files on this new <abbr title="Universal Serial Bus">USB</abbr> drive when it arrives.
	I don&apos;t have time to ship it out today, and the post office will probably be closed tomorrow, but I&apos;ll send it on Monday.
	I&apos;ll be interested to see if he reuses the Game Boy game shell, sending me back the same one with only the <abbr title="Universal Serial Bus">USB</abbr> drive inside replaced.
	It&apos;d be a waste not to do that.
	I should be able to tell too, as the one that I have now has a distinguishing chink out of the plastic.
	They don&apos;t make these games any more, so the chances of finding one of these things perfectly intact are pretty slim, even if there was a reason to look for them in mint condition.
</p>
<p>
	My modem seems to be getting worse.
	I brought the modem back up after it died, only for it to die again right away.
	I also tested to see if restarting <a href="/en/domains/cepo.local.xhtml">cepo</a> would bring <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr> back up, but it doesn&apos;t.
	<abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr> really doesn&apos;t like starting with the correct configuration.
	The only thing that seems to work is removing the <abbr title="Internet Relay Chat">IRC</abbr>-forwarding hidden service from the <a href="file:///etc/tor/torrc"><abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr> configuration</a>, starting <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr>, adding the hidden service back in, then sending a HUP signal to <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr>.
</p>
<p>
	<a href="mailto:csh@bluehome.net">Cal</a> offered to translate my website for me, as I haven&apos;t finished learning Esperanto yet and haven&apos;t been able to translate it yet.
	Two of my websites plan to have such a translation, <a href="https://y.st./">Yst Domain</a> and this onion.
	He asked if I have version control for my site&apos;s code, but didn&apos;t specify which site, so as this onion&apos;s code isn&apos;t fully available and because I want to translate my weblog entries myself anyway, I made sure to provide a link to <a href="https://git.vola7ileiax4ueow.onion/y.st./y.st.">Yst Domain&apos;s source code</a>.
	Instead of translating that site though, Cal translated <a href="https://git.vola7ileiax4ueow.onion/y.st./authorednansyxlu.onion.">Authored Nansyxlu&apos;s source code</a>.
	That was a bit frustrating.
	It&apos;s not that I mind the help, but Cal&apos;s changes can&apos;t go live until I&apos;ve learned Esperanto myself and translated my weblog entries.
	I feel bad that I can&apos;t make use of his addition yet.
	I don&apos;t want him to feel like his efforts aren&apos;t appreciated, after all.
</p>
<p>
	I had a bit of time today, so I tried to debug <a href="apt:quodlibet">Quod Libet</a> for a bit.
	Since installing Debian 8 on <a href="/en/domains/newdawn.local.xhtml">newdawn</a>, Quod Libet hasn&apos;t been able to play music.
	It appears to be running, but doesn&apos;t output any sound for some reason.
	I tried running Quod Libet from the command line to see if I could get any error messages and I saw this:
</p>
<blockquote><pre>yst@newdawn.hn.y.st:~$ quodlibet
0:00:01.016511667 14933      0x17b3210 ERROR             jackclient gstjackaudioclient.c:35:jack_log_error: Cannot connect to server socket err = Dosiero aŭ dosierujo ne ekzistas
0:00:01.016598829 14933      0x17b3210 ERROR             jackclient gstjackaudioclient.c:35:jack_log_error: Cannot connect to server request channel
0:00:01.018728359 14933      0x17b3210 ERROR             jackclient gstjackaudioclient.c:35:jack_log_error: jack server is not running or cannot be started</pre></blockquote>
<p>
	It looks like the issue might be related to the jack audio client, whatever that is.
	Taking a wild guess, I tried installing the <a href="apt:jackd">JACK Audio Connection Kit</a>, which seems to be the server, as the client seemed to already be installed.
	That didn&apos;t work though, and Quod Libet remains silent while continuing to output that error message.
</p>
<p>
	I went out to collect bullet shells again with my mother.
	On the way home, I noticed the other local-ish temp agency.
	I might stop by there at some point to do some more job-seeking.
</p>
<p>
	I was going to go out tonight to see if I could get a replacement tool for removing the nuts from the bolts that hold my bicycle wheels on, but it seems that we&apos;re headed to Springfield tomorrow.
	At least every other weekend, perhaps every weekend, I&apos;ll be expected to shift my sleep cycle to match that of people that don&apos;t have graveyard shifts, while I&apos;ll be working graveyard shifts during the week.
	This is going to be a pain.
</p>
<p>
	It seems that <a href="https://politics.heraldtribune.com/2016/03/15/rubio-drops-out-of-race/">Rubio has dropped out of the presidential race</a>! Most of the remaining candidates still suck, but that&apos;s one less bad candidate in the running.
</p>
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